We've been making a number of improvements to the 3D Fractal Trees in
IRender nXt
and our other rendering products.

Rendering Plants as 2D images

nXt Plants render as full 3D, fractal images - meaning to more you zoom in on the scene before rendering, the more detail you will see.

However for many uses - especially for background trees - you can save rendering time, while still getting great results, by rendering a 2D image of the tree rather than the full, fractal, 3D tree.

Here is a rendering of two plants - zoomed in - the one on the left is rendered as a 2D image, the one on the right is rendered as a 3D, Fractal plant. If you look closely you can see the better detail in the 3D, Fractal plant.

However, if you are not zoomed in closely on the trees, the 2D images will often work just fine.